Monthly Archives: December 2009

On the night of Sunday, December 27, members of the Blogger Academy met to see out 2009. Following the saints of the Catholic Church, it is the feast day of St. John the Evangelist.

Ancient peoples, especially the Romans, always adopted one of their divinities as the patron of all their people, buildings, and even things and places. Christianity incorporated this practice.

The masons (stone cutters, brick layers and master builders) in most cases worked under a religious abbot who was the go-between with the Church. For this reason they were given religious names: the Guild of St. John, of St. Paul, of the Virgin, and so on.

In keeping with that tradition, the modern Masonic fraternity adopted as patrons John the Baptist (June 24) and John the Evangelist, perhaps because their feast days fall near solstice days. We recall that in astronomy the solstices are the points in the sun’s path where it is at its greatest distance from the equator. The height of the sun rises in the spring, reaching its maximum value on June 21, the summer solstice. The winter solstice, in turn, occurs on December 21.

We perceive an esoteric, cosmic message in our celebration: it is close to ending the longest, darkest and coldest night our country has suffered. The blogs and other independent activities on the Island are increasing. Every day there are more voices preaching the good news: The Evangelists of Change.

I think I remember that it was Benjamin Franklin, one of the promoters of the independence of the United States, who told his companions, in a warning about unity: “We must all hang together or we will all hang separately.”

The quarrels, divisions, envy, hatred and confrontations have been constant in our history. By drawing lessons from the past, we keep from repeating our mistakes again and again. That’s why the traditional negative trends have been stimulated, in a systematic way by those who have governed us for the last fifty years, in order to maintain control of the nation. They have also scientifically applied – with technological support – the research findings about human behavior to develop psychological brakes on the population.

Now that our country is in ruin, our future stolen with the huge and ever growing foreign debt, they seek to continue pitting us against one another. One could summarize the philosophy instilled in power, every man for himself and the system against all. But the government can not avoid our cohesion around the goal of common good: democratic change.

Citizens are banding together, slowly and inexorably outlining a genuine civil society that will transform the country we have into the country we want. The incontrovertible indicator of this is in the repressive actions undertaken. As the battlements of fear and the defenses of helplessness carried by each individual fall, the regime erects physical barriers.

We see this when they prevent citizens, potential opinion leaders – who have exorcised their demons and expressed their opinions freely – from accessing public places such as: the concert by singer-songwriter Pedro Luis Ferrer at the Museum of Fine Arts or the Fresa y Chocolate Cultural Complex debate held by the magazine “Topics” on issues of Information Technology, Communications and the Internet. In another dimension they expelled the group Omin Zona Franca from the Casa de la Cultura in Alamar.

The height of the current chain of intolerance was made on the 15th, in the city of Pinar del Rio, home of Karina Chiu, economist, member of the Editorial Board of the digital magazine “Convivencia“. A segregationist system can not tolerate even a publication called “Coexistance,” not even on the Internet! For this, the courtyard of a house, meeting place of civic debate, was confiscated by the totalitarian state which gives with one hand and takes with the other.

Indeed, while the government pirates were prepared to to loot the assets of that family, I was invited to an activity where the Liberal Party of the Republic of Cuba fulfilled an internal agreement. It consisted of recognition of individuals who strive for democratic change. According to this political group, during the last year, the honorees have in common that they contributed their energies “towards the attainment of true freedom and full dignity of all citizens.”

The Veritas Group members seek to establish partnerships to coordinate and align the aspirations of all Cubans. And so by this to win our rights in a way similar to “Fuenteovejuna” by Lope de Vega: all together. To accomplish this we foster close ties with independent groups: journalists, libraries, fraternal organizations, religious denominations and political parties.

Those of us engaged in promoting and strengthening civil society in our country know that the recovery of self-esteem and civic initiative starts from the skin inward. Physical walls that rise up now, with urgency, day and night, shows us how the veil is already torn from our society. Therefore, with firm and well-calculated steps we, with our brothers of the journal “Convivencia”, walk hand in hand, so as a nation come into the future.

Last December 5 the Great Lodge of Cuba fulfilled his 150 Anniversary of founded. Since part of the jubilee in so significant date realized a program of activities that included on the 2nd an Act of Brotherhood among the Respectable Lodges Soles de Martí and the Tropical 56 of the Great Lodge of the State of the Florida.

Act of Brotherhood

The brotherly union is the route that initiates, in our fragmented nation and spoilt society, the change of perspective that it will finish with the exclusions. With this action the Freemasonry sends a message to the Cuban of both shores of the strait of the Florida: there has come the hour of exorcising the demons of the intolerance and of reconstructing our nation.

Likewise, on the 3rd and 4th I celebrate the colloquium ” Freemasonry in the 21st century ” with three subject matters: 1.-Informatic, information and Freemasonry; 2.-The Masonic education and his influence in the new generations; 3.-Freemasonry and Society in the 21st century.

Another moment of the Act

In the latter session there took part the coordinator of the Group Veritas with the presentation: ” The Freemasonry in the 21st century for an inclusive culture of respect and peace “, that in his conclusions it raises:

The progress is in the interactive dynamics of the complementarity and the reciprocity. The route goes from the exclusion to the universal brotherhood.

Nevertheless, paradoxically the Great Lodge of Cuba in the last third of his century and a half of constituted, as all our society, has remained sealed off in the past. Only we look at the front in the temples where there turns out to be inscribed in bronze the agreement of the First National Congress of History, celebrated in 1942 that he declared:

” … the Cuban Freemasonry has been in all the times, from his foundation, the Institution that has contributed more elements to the independence, the freedom, the culture and the progress, so much from the ideological point of view, since for the example of sacrifice, heroism and perseverance offered by his members to give to Cuba a life of human propriety, of equality and social brotherhood and a regime(diet) of healthy democracy. “

It might say that we behave according to the model of the Greek philosopher Parménides (540-450? To. Of A. C.) the one who affirmed that the Universe is eternal, one and immobile. When, actually, the contemporary sciences us demonstrate that it is more near the conception of another Greek philosopher, Heráclito (576-480 to. Of A.C.), defender of the theory of the constant mutability. Let’s remember(remind) that it is she expressed:

” the permanent unique thing is the change and nothing offers any more resistance “.

The Institution – sealed off in his(her,your) workshops – is today what the social scientists have called

In the shield of The Great Lodge of Cuba of A.L. and A.M. the inscription appears: Sit Lux et Lux Fuit. Infodere vis. It is to say: Let’s do light and made light. In the union there is force. The search of the lighting is present in all the religions and is evoked in the iconography. In turn the strength of the cohesion is well-known.

The light that our society claims is that of the pardon and the reconciliation. The union of the acceptance and the love. Only with the complementarity in the diversity we will be able to cure our anthropologic sores and to enter the future as nation.